Minister Louis Farrakhan’s 20th Anniversary of The Million Man March seemed to take place at the perfect time. He delivered a speech with a fervency and passion that covered many topics relevant to this era. Here are a few that I found intriguing:

The Hypocrisy of Our Government: This issue has been proven evident in many of America’s foreign affairs. Analogous to a homeless drunkard demanding that a social drinker stop consuming alcohol, America has used her influence to impose upon other governments what she has not practiced herself.
While we have continued to struggle with racial and class issues since the very birth of this nation, the American government has historically demanded that foreign countries adopt democracy and change their approach to human rights. We’ve landed in foreign territory claiming to bring forth said democracy whilst spilling the blood of innocent natives and American troops.
Minister Farrakhan describes this contradiction in the following statement: “ you play with the lives of poor people, indigenous people, black people, women; you play with the lives of soldiers who have given their lives on a foreign battlefield only to come home and be rejected and die.”

“Stop The Killing in the Inner City AND Killing From Police”: There’s an age old tug-of-war in the black community in which many feel that movements such as #BlackLivesMatter only focus on fatal violence of black people by law enforcement and ignore the killing of one another in black neighborhoods. On the other side of the rope stands the folks who feel that blacks being killed by officers is more of an issue than black-on-black crime. Rarely have we seen an individual, activist or otherwise, who acknowledges the two issues as equally important. Farrakhan balances the scale almost effortlessly, stating “we got to go into our community because our war is on two fronts. We gotta stop the killing in the inner city and stop the killing of us from police wickedness.” Both of these issues are crises that should be afforded our undivided attention if they are to ever be solved. The minister encourages focus on them equally as dilemmas plaguing our communities nationwide.

Why There Was No Media Coverage: Media outlets are concerned most with a specific portrayal of black youth. We’ve witnessed such biases in the midst of recent #BlackLivesMatter rallies and protests in which the majority of people were peacefully protesting. However, the coverage of riots is perpetuated. As a result, these images become ingrained in the mind of the hundreds of millions of Americans who view them daily.
Something that captured my attention almost instantly was Farrakhan’s discussion of one of the most revered men in American history: President Abraham Lincoln. This man has been exalted as one of history’s most noble men and is often credited for the emancipation of slaves in 1863, perhaps the most controversial decision of that century. I found it interesting, however, that the minister mentioned a side of Lincoln that is rarely remembered and often seceded from history books. Minister Farrakhan recalled his experience witnessing Dr. King speak at The Lincoln Memorial in the 60s.

“And then I reflected on Abraham Lincoln’s words. It’s written there for the people to see…he {Lincoln} said ‘if I could preserve the union and keep all in slavery, I would do it.’”Farrakhan ends the quote with a statement that may have shaken the core of many individuals in the audience. “His aim was the preservation of the Union, not freeing you and that’s why you’re still singing ‘We Shall Overcome’.

Even as Lincoln consistently expressed his disdain for slaves and voiced his opposition to their freedom, he is heralded in all facets of media as an American hero over 150 years after his death. In the words of Brother Malcolm X, “the media is the most powerful entity on earth…because they control the minds of the masses.”

In essence, media isn’t here to promote truth or to cast black people in a positive light. If that were so, America would have an accurate perspective on the plight and triumph of black and brown people worldwide. As it stands today, this is a luxury mainstream media cannot afford to grant us and that is perhaps the reason multitudes of Americans are proclaiming #JusticeOrElse.